Political editor, The Age

As the boats kept coming this week, Australia's asylum seeker debate entered strange new territory, where both sides of politics are absorbed in a conflicted and destructive form of bipartisan politics. Both agree the aim is to stop the boats but are locked in a fierce contest to see which side can offer the biggest deterrent to would-be arrivals.

Kevin Rudd's plan to not only process, but resettle, asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea now competes with Tony Abbott's intention to put the military in charge of this ''national emergency''. The objective is common: that permanent resettlement in Australia not be an option for those who arrive uninvited by sea.

But while the aim is the same, so too is the commitment of both sides to denigrate the other's ability to achieve it. Rudd accuses Abbott of having nothing more than his three-word slogan, while Abbott counters that Rudd is all talk and no action.

The result is a win for the very thing both sides of politics are committed to destroy - the business model of the people smugglers. Claim and counter-claim about who has the weaker policy simply propels their market, when the truth is that deterrent alone is not the answer.

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One week after Rudd announced his plan, the doubts about it are more, not less, acute, and summarised neatly in the statement by the United Nations refugee agency on Friday. They cover the immediate challenge of housing large numbers of vulnerable people indefinitely in a country lacking either the capacity or the expertise to process asylum claims, and the much, much greater challenge of permanently settling those with valid claims.

The latter challenge is reflected in the fact that Australia resettles non-Melanesian refugees from PNG because that country has proved unable to find real solutions for them. How will PNG cope with hundreds, or even thousands, of new citizens from the Middle East or Sri Lanka in the months ahead? ''We're concerned that the net effect of the measures is that, for all intents and purposes, Australia ceases to be an asylum country under the [refugee] convention,'' is how the agency's Rick Towle expressed it.

Perversely, it is the dangers implicit in the plan that are its strategic foundation - and the reason it just might work. The idea is that this is a prospect so ghastly that, once the penny drops, people will stop paying people smugglers to put them on boats. It hasn't dropped yet.

If it drops, and the number of arrivals dissipates, the focus will turn to the areas that do have potential to make a difference in the longer term: regional co-operation on processing, resettlement and burden sharing, and addressing the factors that force people to flee their homes.

The inspiration for Rudd's PNG plan is the Pacific Solution that Rudd disbanded in 2007, which began with John Howard's decision to refuse the Tampa, a Norwegian freighter that rescued hundreds of asylum seekers when their boat began to sink in August 2001, permission to drop them off at Christmas Island. The parallels between that episode and this situation are striking - the common aim of quashing asylum seeker expectations of being given permanent visas; improvisation as processing centres are erected at undue speed; and the backdrop of an election that promises to be closely fought.

Back in 2001, it took some months for the number of boat arrivals to slow, and then stop, but not before controversies over false claims that asylum seekers had been prepared to throw their children overboard and the SIEV-X sinking that remains the biggest single known tragedy involving people seeking a haven here.

The difference this time is that the number of boat arrivals is higher and the syndicates are far more sophisticated and entrenched. One insider says it's like comparing someone who grew a couple of marijuana plants in their backyard for personal use with an international drug cartel. Not only that, the industry has such momentum behind it that PNG could be overwhelmed inside a month if the message of deterrent fails to penetrate. What happens then? The option of redirecting the overflow to Nauru is off the table because that camp was razed last week.

Of course, the Rudd and Gillard governments carry much of the responsibility for this, having dismantled the Howard model and watched as problems escalated when the Coalition and the Greens combined to thwart the Malaysian people-swap deal after it was struck down by the High Court.

We will never know, but the numbers were so modest two years ago that the Malaysian agreement might have worked to stem the flow of arrivals, admittedly at a cost, if the Coalition and Greens had co-operated. Moreover, both sides of politics failed to put their weight behind a regional co-operation model when the number of arrivals was low and the pressure was off. Once its trump card of Malaysia was removed, the Gillard government struggled as the number of arrivals continued to increase. The expert panel's recommendations were embraced in August, but selectively implemented. Only a fraction of the money that was recommended to be spent on building the capacity of Indonesia was committed.

The ''no advantage'' principle was supposed to mean that boat arrivals had no advantage over those who waited patiently in transit countries, but it was applied unequally and never adequately defined. Those who were sent to Nauru could not comprehend why they were subject to arbitrary detention on that island while those who came after them were released into the Australian community on bridging visas (but without the right to work).

Those who took part in last week's riot and now face long jail terms in Nauru appear to have been unaware that decisions on their claims were imminent and that the government was belatedly considering recommendations to fly them to Australia. Serious questions about how these cases were managed need to be answered.

While the facilities were adequate on Nauru, those on Manus were not, increasing the risks of the sorts of abuses that were alleged this week. And, as Australia's government and opposition attacked each other's policies, the countries that must be part of a real solution were caught in the crossfire: East Timor, Malaysia, Indonesia, PNG and Nauru.

For now, all the pressure is on new Immigration Minister Tony Burke to make the PNG policy work, but there are also questions for Abbott about how his new ''command and control model'' will stop the boats. Australia's former Defence Force chief Chris Barrie, for one, is not convinced.

Overseeing the first transfer from Christmas Island to Manus Island, almost certainly in the coming week, is the first of many challenges for Burke. If he succeeds, there might just be potential for the treatment of asylum seekers to recede as a top-order issue. That would be welcome.

A bipartisan consensus on a new approach, one not framed solely through the prism of deterrent, would be even better. As Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus expressed it in a speech on Friday, it could even ''become a symbol of our maturity as nation''. I'd like to see that.

Michael Gordon is political editor of The Age.

24 comments

If Australia follows the wishes of the UNHRC, Greens, Refugee advocates etc, we will soon have 100,000 refugees arriving a month and no more influence or rights in the case. As 70% of those are Muslim and many Islamic activists or sympathisers, we will soon have an Islamic conflict or great proportions in our country. Just tell me how Australia is going to incorporate over 1 million "refugees" without our systems degrading and falling apart?

Commenter

Think

Location

Australia

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 3:23AM

There's refugees in camps in East Africa waiting to be resettled .Then there's boat people and off shore processing centres.The United States has border controls along its southern border.If something is not done about global warming then there will be climate change refugees.

Commenter

Andy

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 9:40AM

Once again we are driven into a yes/no either/or duopoly paradigm.

And yet there is a third force in Australian politics that is largely ignored or derided as irrelevant, and that is the Greens.

The Greens solution to asylum seekers is humanitarian, has the blessing of the UNHCR, and many refugee advocates, is much much less expensive, and much less likely to risk lives. The Greens policy means that genuine refugees will be brought into society, just as we have done in the past to make for a better Australia in the long run.

But the MSM continues to encourage this unedifying race to the bottom by Rudd and Abbott, and that brings us all into disgraace.

Commenter

Riddley Walker

Location

Inland

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 9:50AM

I like to cross referance most articals each morning yet on abc news on the internet does not mention one word about 1100 plus illegals making it to our shores this week.We knew this wouldnt fly Krudd can say what he likes to try and discredit Tony Abbott about his three word slogans but i know who will make this work without all the postering and me me me attitude. I dont think they get the morning newspapers in indonesia in most of these villages but they certanally get the ABC

Commenter

flim flam kevvy

Location

perth

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 9:51AM

How long before people traffickers start shipping people from PNG to Australia?

Commenter

People Traffikers

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 10:15AM

Rudd's hastily fashioned Manus 'solution' will unravel - it is deeply flawed because when you examine the detail, or lack of it, it is clear the logistics to build the required infrastructure on Manus is overwhelming. It will take another 12-18 months for a permanent facility to be built. In the meantime thousands more people will arrive, effectively scuttling the plan by Rudd to con voters (especially Western Sydney) that he has fixed the problem.

Commenter

Tim of Altona

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 10:17AM

If you live in an abstract and mythical world of UN Conventions, regional solutions, soft toughness, and saintly, responsibility free illegal entrants, then Australia will be overrun. Give me practical people with practical solutions that see through these confected 'difficulties' and put Australia's interests first. If it takes physical means to stand up to this invasion so be it. It will also save plenty of lives in the long run.

Commenter

antipostmodernism

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 11:15AM

A very thorough analysis. I guess one can't help being partisan, but I blame Abbott for not supporting Rudd. He could forget the past and stop blaming Rudd for dismantling Howard's policy, but he can't because Rudd has seized the initiative. The salient point here is the threat, and if Abbott weakens the threat, the boats will keep coming. The up side is that Indonesia will now have to take seriously the problem of refugees and might begin an overdue conversation with us about it. Then we will have to throw money at resettlement programs, but that's ok. So, while I can't disagree with anything presented here, I think responsibility now rests with the Opposition, but they are not in a political position to exercise it. What a terrible situation for a democracy that election politics will cost lives.

Commenter

Mongoose

Location

Sydney

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 12:13PM

For six long years labor dithered after dismantling the Pacific Solution that worked, dithered because it could not bring itself to admit that they Stuffed up big time, Rudd you and you alone are responsible for the 1000;s drowned at sea and 45,000 arrivals since, do not try to slither out of it and blame anyone else, you fix it.

Commenter

Observer

Date and time

July 27, 2013, 12:16PM

Offer the Indonesian government continued aid if they agree to Australian conditions to solve the problems, otherwise aid will cease also offer a $200,000 bounty to any Indonesian for the capture and conviction of people smugglers operating in Indonesia for the next two years as a trial, That is big money in Indonesia and will soon sort out the police and also pay-offs to the fisherman.